Eight Vietnamese startups spanning clean technology, agritech, smart-factory automation and AI will travel to Tokyo from July 27 to August 1 for a week of pitch events and one-on-one meetings with Japanese companies and investors, according to PR TIMES. The “Viet Nam–Japan high-growth Startup Connection Program” is organized by Tokyo-based 01Booster together with Ho Chi Minh City–based InnoLab Asia, under an initiative run by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and Vietnam’s National Innovation Center (NIC) with Japanese government funding. The eight companies were selected after a six-month acceleration program.
This is the second of two planned delegations this fiscal year; a first cohort of 11 startups visited Japan from June 29 to July 4 and held more than 50 business meetings. Public sessions during the second visit include a startup-ecosystem seminar and networking on July 28 and 30, a pitch event for all eight companies on July 29, plus individual meetings of roughly 20 minutes each; participation is free.
Named participants include Alterno Energy, a sand-based thermal storage developer with commercial deployments at PepsiCo, Mondelez, NTT and Yamaha; VOX Cool, an Oxford-derived phase-change cold-storage venture with UK government grant backing; and ENFARM AGRITECH, which sells AI-driven soil-sensor and fertilization tools already active in the Philippines. The delegation also includes an unnamed aquaculture startup that the release says carries potential to generate blue carbon credits, alongside other unnamed entrants in autonomous water-surface robotics, digital-twin platforms, mobile robotics and neural-symbolic AI.
Carbon Market Context
- Blue carbon projects — including mangrove and seaweed-based systems of the kind referenced for one of the delegation’s aquaculture startups — are an emerging category within Asia’s voluntary carbon market, drawing growing interest from corporate buyers seeking nature-based offsets.
Source
- UNDP・NIC、ベトナムスタートアップ8社と日本企業・投資家との連携を促進する「Viet Nam–…PR TIMES — 検索「カーボンクレジット」(企業リリース), published 2026-07-13